


I Will Be A Gun (And It's You I'll Come For)

by Archetype_ElectraHeart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon? What Canon?, F/F, F/M, HYDRA sucks, Human Experimentation, Multi, a Lucy AU, deaf!Clint, it's not real science guys I know you don't have to tell me, with comic book science
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9258557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archetype_ElectraHeart/pseuds/Archetype_ElectraHeart
Summary: "At first, Darcy thought she was hungover. The kind of epic, dry-mouth, gritty-eyed, pounding-headache type of hangover that she could usually blame on Clint or Tony.But then she registered the tang of copper in her mouth and the cold, pocked surface of concrete under her shoulder and an odd, metallic weight on her ankle and reconsidered."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is me trying to stretch my writing muscles after so much time away. This little plot-bunny originated after I saw the movie Lucy and wasn't terribly satisfied with their version of increased cognition (why does a more powerful brain suddenly find itself incapable of emotions I don't get it). I'm also avoiding the whole "percentage of brain use" thing because humans don't only use 10-15% of their brain (I know, science nerds, you can yell at Luc Besson), so we're going with increased neural capacity as a vague explanation because COMIC BOOK SCIENCE.
> 
> [[title from Gun by CHVRCHES]]

At first, Darcy thought she was hungover. The kind of epic, dry-mouth, gritty-eyed, pounding-headache type of hangover that she could usually blame on Clint or Tony.

But then she registered the tang of copper in her mouth and the cold, pocked surface of concrete under her shoulder and an odd, metallic weight on her ankle and reconsidered.

Darcy cracked open one eye and peeked around. Concrete cell, chain around her left ankle. No windows, single door.

All she could do was wait.

  
  


***

  
  


The next time Darcy woke up it was because someone had opened the door, which emitted a metallic screech.

Darcy was preparing a quip about greasing palms or oiling hinges when the man (in tac gear, fully armed, combat boots) produced a syringe and pressed it into her neck.

 

_ God. Damnit. _

  
  


***

 

When Darcy came to again she was strapped into a medical chair (she tugged at the straps and bucked against them and had to conclude that they were, indeed, solid restraints) in a brightly lit and sterile-looking room. There was a tray of surgical instruments (sadly out of reach) to her right and an IV bag full of some weird blue substance labeled  _ CPH4 (synth.)  _ to her left.

She craned her neck around to get a better view of the room and spotted the skull-octopus nonsense that HYDRA had designed for a logo (and really could they not afford a better graphic artist?) on the back wall.

 

Darcy thought, for a moment, through the possibilities implied by her current situation and could come to only one conclusion.

_ I am royally fucked. _

  
  
  
  


An older white guy in a lab coat came into the room a few minutes later, flanked by two burly young white guys in black tac gear.

“So are the ranks of this organization as homogenous as I think they are?” Darcy asked. “The old ‘white is right’ and by ‘right’ I actually mean fascist and racist thing?”

The “doctor” gave her a tight, cold smile. “Miss Lewis. How kind of you to join us.”

“I would literally prefer to get a root canal and a gynecological exam  _ simultaneously _ than be here with you, Dr. Mengele. So fuck you very much.”

He snapped on a pair of latex gloves (with a little too much enthusiasm, in Darcy’s opinion, because those things did actually tear very easily and if she was going to be experimented upon she would at least prefer a competent evil scientist) and glanced over the instrument tray and the IV bag.

“Yes, well. Hopefully you will be useful to us nonetheless.”

“I would genuinely prefer that you kill me now than be helpful to you in any way later.”

He produced a mask attached to a gas tank that Darcy hadn’t seen before because it was partially under the chair.  “Fortunately for us, you don’t actually have a choice.” He fitted the mask over her mouth and adjusted the nozzle on the tank and the world started to go fuzzy again.

 

_ Double Goddamn. _

 

***   
  


When Darcy came to she was in a nicer holding cell, with a bed and a toilet. 

She also felt like she was dying. Her head was throbbing, her eyes were too sensitive for her to open them at all, she could hear  _ so much _ and none of it was familiar. She was simultaneously starving and nauseated. Overheated and shivering.

She curled up in a ball with her hands over her ears and tried not to sob as her muscles seized and throbbed.  
  
  


She drifted miserably on waves of sensation for an indeterminate amount of time, in and out of consciousness.

 

At some point, she heard the doctor’s voice in the hallway. She wasn’t responding well to treatment. The stress seemed to be too much for her system. It was unlikely that she would survive.

“Just like the others.”

Her throat tightened and her eyes burned as tears tried to squeeze out from behind closed lids.

At least she wouldn’t be useful to them, she thought. At least they couldn’t make her help them if she was dead.

  
  


***

  
  


The next time that Darcy woke up, the world around her seemed more quiet, more still.

 

_ Night _ .

 

When she cautiously opened her eyes, the cell seemed brighter than it should be, more vibrant, but that took a backseat when she spotted a tray of food on the floor near the door.

 

She was  _ starving _ .

 

Darcy flopped in the direction of the tray, limbs barely coordinated, and started shoveling food into her mouth.

It was nowhere near enough, and it tasted strange (like preservatives, though, not like tranqs, so whatever) and Darcy was still hungry when the tray was empty.

Darcy stood, slowly regaining her equilibrium, and looked around.   
  


Something was seriously weird with her eyes. And possibly her brain.  
  


Because Darcy knew the precise distance between the bed and the walls on every side just by looking, and she could sense the heat beyond the right cinderblock wall from some kind of machine, and she could hear the guard patrol in the hallways (2 men, combat boots, one with a slight limp from a poorly healed dislocated knee, 400 feet down the hall), and she could  _ feel _ her body processing her food.

Enhanced senses?

Darcy stood very still and tried to relax. 

There was a tiny clerestory window above the sink and Darcy wished she could see outside, just catch a glimpse of the real world outside of this fucking nightmare but she couldn’t get up there. She thought about the big windows in her room at Stark Tower, and how much she had loved to watch the city out of them, learning the rhythms of New York and all its angles. 

When Darcy opened her eyes, the window had shifted to eye level and enlarged itself to a five by five foot square.

Terrified that she had started to hallucinate, Darcy reached out to touch it, surprised to find that the glass was solid and smooth and cool to the touch from the cold November air outside. 

Darcy kneeled on the bed and stared at the window. 

She had done this, somehow. By nothing more than wanting, she had moved a window and made it bigger. She could hear as well as Steve and see as well as Clint, and who knew what else she could do because of that blue liquid in that IV that the creepy doctor had pumped into her veins.

 

HYDRA had expected her to be useful to them. Darcy looked down at her ordinary looking hands and shuddered.

They were building the perfect opponent to the Avengers. 

And Darcy was their guinea pig.

The thought of being turned into a weapon for HYDRA was intolerable. Unacceptable.

She had been fine with dying, earlier, if that would have saved her from such a fate. But it looked like her body had adjusted (even if it was still starving, Jesus Christ, did they have no idea what they’d done to her metabolism?) to whatever treatment they’d given her and that meant that they would be coming for her in the morning.

Nothing good could come of that.

 

So Darcy stared at the window and tilted her head to one side and thought really hard about how nice it would be if that glass just wasn’t there anymore and watched as it disappeared.

No shimmering, no shattering, no melting, just *poof* and it was gone like it had never been there.

Darcy leaned over to see how far the drop was to the ground.

She was on the second story of a compound that backed up to the woods. There were no patrols outside the building. She could survive the drop with minimal injury, especially if she broke her fall.

Darcy took a deep breath, prayed that a little bit of Clint’s luck had rubbed off on her, and prepared to jump.

She tucked her head and rolled to soften the landing on the grass, and broke into a sprint for the tree line as soon as she straightened. She wished the window back to its original spot and size. She kept running when she reached the tree line, trying to put as much distance between herself and the HYDRA base as she could before they realized she was gone.

  
  


But before she could make it very far, the horrible truth burrowed its way out of the depths of her brain. If she escaped like this, HYDRA would know that their experiment had worked and they would just use the CPH4 on someone else.

Darcy had to make sure that no one had access to that research. It was the only way to keep her friends safe. And the only way to do that was to go full-on scorched earth. 

Darcy was not a trained agent. She didn’t know how to make a bomb and remote detonate it. But her brain had already managed some pretty spectacular things, and a building collapse/sinkhole might even cover her tracks long enough to get the professionals out here to clean up.

So she turned around and looked at the building. It was small, really no bigger than a single family home, which surprised her. The good news was that that probably meant that there weren’t too many people inside and all of them were most likely dedicated to her and this weird creepy science experiment. She hoped. 

 

She had to, or she would never be able to go through with it.

 

It was easy then, to picture the center of the building collapsing into the earth, and fires sparking throughout the building, and to watch the crumbling cinderblock structure collapse in on itself like a souffle. 

She stood and watched for a moment to make sure no one escaped and then she started running.

She didn’t get tired. She didn’t get out of breath. She didn’t get cold.

  
  
***  
  
  


Darcy didn’t stop at the first town she came to, knowing that was the first place that HYDRA would search for her if anyone had managed to send out a distress call from the facility before it collapsed fully. When she made it to the second town away from the HYDRA base she had to start planning.

She was still in a hospital gown, she had no money, she had no phone, no ID, no form of transportation.  
  


 

Darcy ducked into a laundromat, barely open and still empty of customers, and snagged a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt from a pile of clean, dry laundry. She nearly cried in relief when she spotted a pair of grass-stained Keds that someone had been trying to wash, because she was pretty sure that she was going to have to steal shoes someplace otherwise.

She eyed the vending machines in the back corner speculatively, and walked closer. 

A bottle of water and two protein bars fell out of the machines with nothing more than a mental nudge.

  
***  
  


She was in a small town in Pennsylvania, south of Philadelphia. There was a small, antiquated Amtrak station, two tracks, with train service into New York.

 

Darcy walked into the train station, calm and collected, and walked up to the ticketing machine.

She had no idea if this was going to work as well as the vending machines, but she had to try.

Thirty seconds later, a ticket for Francesca Barton to New York Penn Station, one-way, popped out of the machine.

_ Jesus Fucking Christ _ , Darcy thought as she snatched the ticket out and walked over to the bathrooms to wash up before her train left.  _ What did they fucking do to me? _  
  


 

She could heat the water coming out of the tap with her mind and turn on the hand-dryer and open the door without moving a muscle. 

 

This was beyond Steve’s super-serumed senses. There was no red swirly stuff like when Wanda did her magic. Whatever that CPH4 stuff had done to her, it wasn’t a recreation of the others’ abilities.

 

Darcy hoped like hell that she was one-of-a-kind.

 

***  
  


Darcy slept, curled up into a tiny ball in the middle of a car in the middle of the train, until she made it to New York.

 

Penn Station was the first real test of her ability to stay calm in the face of total sensory overload. She forced herself to stay focused, and not get drawn in by every flash of movement and every conversation that filtered into her consciousness. 

The shoes she had grabbed from the laundromat were a touch too big for her, and focusing on walking without tripping over her own toes helped to keep her grounded in the chaotic press of bodies and noise and color and smells.

  
  


She walked to the tower, and started to feel for JARVIS on the electromagnetic waves around her when she got close.

 

_ <JARVIS, it’s Darcy. HYDRA gave me something. Get Bruce.> _

She repeated it like a mantra until there was a response.

 

_ <Miss Lewis? How are you communicating with me? I don’t recognize the formatting of your transmissions.> _

 

_ <Mentally, J.> _

 

_ <Do you mean to say that you are transmitting your thoughts directly to my servers?> _

 

_ <Yes.> _

 

_ <That should not be possible. Sir is going to be most distressed when he finds out.> _

 

_ <J, what is CPH4?> _

 

_ <It is an organic molecule produced by pregnant women that enables the growth of the fetus during gestation. A former professor of neuroscience from Berkeley believed that synthetic CPH4 could unlock the brain’s cognitive capacity and allow humans to generate more neurons than genetics currently allow. But his theories were dismissed by the scientific community and have never been proven.> _

 

Darcy sighed and turned the final corner en route to Stark Tower.  _ <Bad news, J. I think your evil scientist might have been on to something. And I think he found a new employer who was very interested in those theories.> _

 

_ <In order for your brain to be capable of manipulating electromagnetic waves, your cognitive capacity would have to have been significantly magnified. I will alert Dr. Banner.> _

 

_ <J, I don’t know what all they did to me, so keep the rest of the team away. I’ll make my way to lockdown and Bruce should be able to examine me safely once I’m there.> _

 

_ <They are not going to like that, Miss Lewis. But I shall relay the message.> _

  
  


 

The lobby of Stark Tower was both familiar and strange, the colors brighter, the metallic trim more vibrant, the echoing acoustics more noticeable than they had been to her before. She was more aware of the security officers, she knew how each was armed, she knew that she could disable their communication systems with a single thought.

  
It was heady and terrifying to know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The quiet of lockdown and Bruce’s calming presence were like a balm to Darcy’s fraying, sensitive nerves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, folks, relationship tags etc have been updated. After much careful consideration, I am going with Clint/Darcy/Natasha. I know a lot of you were hoping to see something with Bucky (who btw is still the at-large Winter Soldier at this point in this story) but I don't want his issues to completely overpower Darcy's in this story and essentially form the core of a romantic relationship between them. He will nonetheless be important to the plot moving forward, so you won't be deprived of him, I promise :)

The quiet of lockdown and Bruce’s calming presence were like a balm to Darcy’s fraying, sensitive nerves.

 

“Hiya, Doc,” she murmured. “It’s really good to see your face. And your fluffy hair.”

Bruce came closer, a soft smile on his face. “We were really worried about you. You’ve been gone for over a week.”

Darcy bit her lip and felt tears welling up in her eyes. “I could really use a hug right now, if that’s cool with you.”

Bruce put down the clipboard he was carrying and opened his arms.

He smelled like green tea and ballpoint pens and Darcy could hide her face against the linen of his shirt and finally let herself cry, big shoulder-wracking sobs.

“They did something to me, Bruce. I can do things with my mind. Impossible things.”

“Most of us can do things that should be impossible, Darcy. Whatever it is, we’ll handle it.”

“I collapsed a building, Doc. I made a building collapse with my mind. I killed people.” Darcy took a great sucking breath, and mushed her face into Bruce’s shoulder. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

Bruce patted her on the back, a little awkward but earnest in his efforts to comfort her. “I’m sorry you had to do that, Darcy.” He pulled back and looked her over. “Let me take a look at you so that you can go out and see the others.”

Darcy wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded. “I know that they injected me with a synthetic version of CPH4. JARVIS told me that there was a disgraced former professor from Berkeley who thought that a synthetic version of the compound would increase neural capacity. I heard the doctor say that other test subjects didn’t survive, and at first they didn’t think that I would either. It seemed like my system was overwhelmed by all the stimuli or something.”

“Symptoms?” Bruce asked as he shined a penlight in her eyes.

“When I first came to everything was too loud and bright, and I was really hungry but also really nauseated. Like all my senses had been turned up to 11. Muscle spasms and cramps.”

“And after you stabilized?” He gently took her wrist in one hand to take her pulse, eyes on his old Timex.

“Enhanced senses and depth perception--I could tell distances by looking at them, hear guards on patrol 400 feet down the hall through cinderblock. Still hungry after a full meal, so probably an increased metabolism. Increased stamina, endurance, threshold for pain. And I could think things and they would happen.”

“Examples,” Bruce prompted as he started to jot down notes.

“I moved and enlarged a window, then made the glass disappear. I collapsed a building and set fires inside said building. I got food from a vending machine and a train ticket from a kiosk without touching either. I heated water, I opened a door. I communicated with JARVIS using only my mind by detecting the right electromagnetic signature in my vicinity.”

“Interesting.” Bruce wrote more rapidly. “Did they exert any control over you, mentally, at any point?”

“No, but I escaped as soon as I stabilized. I couldn’t let them realize the experiment had worked or they would use it on one of their people, so I destroyed the building. But so far it seems like I have control over myself.” She took a deep breath. “And everything around me.”

Bruce eyed her speculatively. “Can you show me?”

Darcy stopped his hand from writing any more notes and retracted the tip of the ballpoint pen in his hand. Bruce stared down at his hand and the pen and then looked back at Darcy and nodded. “Good.”

“Good?”

Bruce put the pen down and turned to face her, adjusting his glass for a moment before speaking. “I have an idea of the scope of your capabilities. You have control over your own body, as evidenced by the increased pain tolerance and endurance levels. You have control over physical objects around you, as evidenced by my pen and the window. You also have control over other bodies, including my own, and non-tangibles like electromagnetic fields.”

“Is it permanent?”

Bruce shrugged. “We’ll draw blood every 12 hours and run a panel to monitor the levels of CPH4 in your system to see if they’re holding steady. But I’ll need a little time before I can give you an answer. They would have had to give you more than the CPH4 alone to get your body to maintain those levels independently, but in theory it would be possible to sustain if you could trick the body into producing it at the necessary levels outside of pregnancy.”

Darcy blinked. “That’s why the others died.” Bruce raised an eyebrow in question. “They must have been testing on men before me.”

Bruce nodded and started writing again. “They would have lacked the proper receptors to process the molecule and their body would have likely started attacking itself. Interesting.”

“You need to eat,” Darcy blurted out.

Bruce blinked at her.

“Your blood sugar is slow.”

Not that I should be able to tell that _at all_ , Darcy thought to herself, but my life is weird now and I apparently have lost all concept of personal boundaries.

But Bruce just gave her one of his non-smiles, where his face softened and the corners of his eyes crinkled, and nodded. “Somebody showed up asking for me before I could eat my lunch. We can go grab something together after I take a blood sample. I’m sure you need to eat, too.”

Darcy nodded. “I could really go for some pizza.”

“Noted.”

 

***

 

Darcy knew that a sizable crowd had formed outside the door to wait for her and Bruce to emerge, the cluster of heartbeats obvious to her now even when firmly out of sight.

She was nonetheless caught off guard when a blurry form (Jane, her body supplied) immediately wrapped around her with tiny, strong arms.

 

“Hey, Janey.”

 

Jane cried into her neck and Darcy registered that the fingernails on her left hand had been bitten down to the quick, shorter than the ones on Jane’s opposite hand where they were digging into her shoulder blade.

“You’ve been drinking too much coffee,” Darcy murmured into Jane’s hair. “Your heartbeat’s all wonky.”

Jane hiccoughed and grabbed on to her even tighter. “You can hear my heartbeat?”

Darcy decided not to mention that she could pick out everyone’s heartbeat, and that Jane’s sounded like a little hummingbird compared the powerful thunk of Steve Rogers’ heart off to her left or the steady beat of Bruce’s carefully regulated pulse behind her.

Darcy ran a gentle hand over the back of Jane’s head (and her ridiculously tangled hair) and pressed a quick kiss to her temple, nearly overwhelmed with affection for her tiny little flighty scientist and grateful (belatedly) for the chance to gather herself from behind the privacy of Jane’s hair. “You gotta let the rest of them see that I’m okay, Janey, or I’m never gonna get to eat something. But you can be my barnacle later.”

Jane quickly disentangled herself and wiped at her cheeks with both hands. “Pizza?”

“You know it.”

Jane pulled her phone out of her pocket and started tapping purposefully at the screen. “I’ll order your favorite and have it delivered. And I will kill anyone who tries to take any of it.”

 

Tony was fidgeting with something in his pocket. “Here,” he blurted as he shoved a ring into her hand. She stared down at the exact copy of one of her favorite rings, minus the patina, and blinked at Tony. “GPS tracking device. So we can find you faster. If there is a next time.”

Darcy smiled and grabbed Tony’s face in both hands, kissing each cheek while he squirmed, a performed reluctance that contradicted the rush of serotonin in his body at the physical contact. She slid the ring on and promised to wear it always before stepping over into Pepper’s outstretched arms.

“I was so worried about you,” Pepper murmured after she had released Darcy and looked her over carefully. “And we’re both very glad to have you back home.”

 

Wanda was next, her lips pressed firmly together, spine ramrod straight. Darcy nodded at her. “It’s okay, Red. I’m here.” She extended her hand out, palm up, in an invitation to touch. Sometimes Wanda got nervous about contact and Darcy could feel the pent up energy under the other girl’s skin. “You’re not gonna hurt me. I promise.” Wanda gently lay her hand over Darcy’s, her dark nail polish chipped badly. Darcy squeezed softly in reassurance, once, before Wanda stepped closer to wrap both arms around her in a loose hug. Wanda murmured something quietly in Romani and then let Darcy go, pushing her towards Sam and Steve.

“Glad to see you’re okay, Darcy,” Sam said with a crooked smile as he pulled her into a quick hug. Steve echoed him, squeezing her a hair too tight for a moment before letting go and stepping aside.

 

She quickly understood why they had been more brief in their greetings when she spotted Natasha and Clint behind them, standing shoulder to shoulder in full gear. They looked tense enough that Darcy hesitated for a moment before walking closer, but Clint reached out to reel her in by her shoulder, one arm across her back and his other hand holding the back of her head. Darcy settled in and stayed put, because Clint’s slowing pulse told her he had been a lot more freaked than he was letting on, facially speaking, and it would be best to let him center himself before the duo went on their vengeance escapades.

As soon as Clint let go of Darcy he turned her to face Natasha, who spent a long, uncomfortable moment looking Darcy over, even grabbing her hands to examine each wrist and elbow carefully. Apparently satisfied, she took one step closer to press a kiss to the center of Darcy’s forehead and breathe her in, so quickly and quietly that the old Darcy would have missed it.

“You’re in uniform,” Darcy said when Natasha stepped back. She could hear Coulson’s voice in their ears, sense their comm units’ transmissions back to wherever Coulson was stationed on the air.

Clint nodded and opened his mouth to explain, but Darcy cut him off. “39° 51' N, 76° 00'  W. It was a two-story building, but it’s collapsed. Make sure all their data is destroyed and I’ll forgive you for the hug-and-run.”

 

She could understand that for them, seeing her home and safe wasn’t enough.

It wouldn’t be enough until they could scorch a little earth of their own.

 

Natasha’s answering smile was a touch vicious. “It will be our pleasure.”

“And tell Phil that he better bring me a batch of his scones along with the pile of paperwork that I’m going to have to fill out after all this.”

She could hear his little huff of amusement over the duo’s comms and smiled.

 

 

***

 

Darcy had to excuse herself from the group pizza party that had formed in the common area sooner than she would have liked.

 

New York, unlike rural Pennsylvania, had a lot more...everything. And Darcy could feel and sense it all around her like a semi-discordant symphony: the whirring machines in Jane’s lab, the slow growing roots of Bruce's bonsai trees, the steady hum of Tony’s suits at rest, the water running through the pipes, the subway whooshing through the tunnels under the buildings down the block, Sam and Steve playing Sinatra on vinyl in their apartment while Steve sketched (charcoals, not pencil) and Sam turned the pages of a paperback book. She could even pick out the sound of Tony brushing Pepper’s hair up in the penthouse.

 

She could sense the heartbeats of her people (minus the crew that had taken off in the quinjet an hour and four minutes earlier) dotted around the tower, could identify each without hesitation. She kept finding herself strangely overcome with emotion, feeling so utterly connected to the world and dazzled by all the invisible beauties that had always been there, unacknowledged and beyond reach. 

 

She wasn’t sure anymore whether she wanted to be normal again. Wasn’t sure if she could bear to go back to a body that would feel numbed, as if she were wrapped in cotton and apart from the world.

To suddenly feel so terribly, terribly alone.

 

***

 

Darcy woke up hours later in her own bed in Stark Tower, in the vibrant darkness of a New York night, with the instantaneous knowledge that Clint and Natasha had returned to the Tower and that Phil was staying in one of the guest rooms downstairs.

 

Clint’s steady heartbeat and the quiet whine of his hearing aids were in the vent above her, his breathing slow and steady from sleep. She could smell the faint edge of smoke clinging to him, underneath the ivory soap he showered with.

 

Natasha was awake and sitting against the outside of Darcy’s bedroom door, her fingers brushing up and down the blade of a knife, a mug of cold tea sitting next to her on the carpet.

  
  
_Safe_ , Darcy’s brain supplied before she slipped back into sleep. _All safe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a photoset for this chapter is [here](https://pepperpottsblogs.tumblr.com/post/155742363155/i-will-be-a-gun-and-its-you-ill-come-for) on tumblr


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The spyssassins and Phil learn a little more about what's happened to Darcy. Plus breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clint is deaf in this fic, so there will be communications via ASL. I will be using traditional grammar to keep things as clear as possible, but all ASL will be set apart using # (pound keys). If the sentence is both said aloud and signed, there will be both quotation marks and pound keys bracketing the sentence. Let me know if that reads clearly or not, since this is a new formatting challenge for me!
> 
> My semester starts up on Tuesday, so don't expect the updates to continue this frequently once I've got more responsibilities on my plate. But I've got lots of ideas for this, so it won't be abandoned or neglected, I promise. <3

The next morning when Darcy woke up, Natasha had left her post and was back in the apartment she normally shared with Clint, the sound of water hitting the shower floor and water rushing through the pipes towards their room making it clear why she had left. Clint was still asleep in the vent over her bedroom, hearing aids still on.

 

Darcy stretched slowly, taking inventory of the heartbeats around the tower and the air currents outside, just because she could.

Phil was making scones--Darcy’s favorite kind, with the sugared pecan bits, from the smell of things.

 

Figuring coffee would be the most effective lure to get Clint out of the vents, she slipped out of bed and into the kitchen

 

It didn’t take long after the machine started percolating for her to hear Clint shifting in the vents.

So predictable.

  
  


 

 

#You should not sleep with your aids in,# Darcy signed as soon as Clint appeared in the kitchen, adorably rumpled with a crease across his right cheek.

Clint blinked at her and shook his head slightly. “#You don’t know sign language.#”

Darcy rolled her eyes. #Oh, really? Then what’s this?# 

“Okay.” Clint took a large gulp of coffee from the purple mug she had set out for him on the counter and scratched his head. “You didn’t know sign language before today. Right? I would have noticed. I would have noticed that.”

#I put my fancy new brain to good use while you were gone yesterday.# It had been almost terrifying easy. And also super cool and exhilarating and nice to find something so boring and safe to use her newfound powers for.

Clint still seemed reluctant, so Darcy signed #At least take out the right one, _please_? I know it’s bothering you,# before pouting as adorably as she knew how until Clint finally reached up to remove the small, nearly invisible hearing aids that SHIELD had designed for him to wear in the field.  

#Thank you,# Darcy signed.

Clint gulped down the remainder of his coffee and reached for the pot to get himself a refill before signing, #How could you have known that I slept with my aids in? And are you honestly telling me that you learned sign in one night?#

#I could hear them every time I woke up,# Darcy said with a tap to one ear. #Up in the vents. They whine like a mosquito.# She took a sip of her own coffee. #And yes, kind of. I’d been trying to learn for a while, but I was having trouble keeping all the movements straight before. So I read the book again last night and watched some videos. Fancy new brain seems to have done the trick.#

Clint was staring in the way that always made Darcy nervous. They called him Hawkeye for a reason, after all. #You had a book on sign language. Before this.#

Darcy bit her lip and turned to grab some Nutella from the cabinet behind her. #It didn’t seem fair that the only people you could talk to without your aids were Nat and Phil# she signed, fingerspelling the names. #Especially because Phil doesn’t live here. And you and Nat can still have secret couple conversations in Russian or whatever.#

 Clint scrunched up his face and signed, #We don’t have secret couple conversations. What are you talking about?#

Darcy decided to avoid that line of questioning by busying her hands, grabbing two spoons from the drawer next to Clint’s hip and handing him one. She then unscrewed the lid on the Nutella and shoved a spoonful into her mouth. Clint hopped up to sit on the counter and scooped out his own bite.

 

#Natasha is going to be coming inside in just a second,# Darcy warned, knowing that Clint couldn’t see the door from where he was sitting and not wanting him to be startled.

#How do you know?#

#Heartbeat,# Darcy signed.

#You can tell whose heartbeat is coming down the hall?# 

Darcy’s answer was to simultaneously shrug and nod before she promptly shoved a new spoonful of Nutella into her mouth.

#The problem with sign language is that you can still talk with your mouth full,# Clint signed while rolling his eyes. #Nice try though.#

Natasha came through the door at that moment and looked between the two in surprise.

#Clint doesn’t have his ears in,# Darcy signed towards her.

Natasha eyed Darcy speculatively. #You learned sign.#

Darcy nodded and tried to change the subject. #You two should have got some rest last night when you got home. You didn’t have to keep watch in here. Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, # she quickly added. #But there is plenty of security in the tower.#

Clint shook his head, frowning slightly. #We weren’t worried that someone was coming to get you.#

“#Tony said that you checked out of your welcome home party early, and that you looked a little out of it,#” Natasha explained. "#We wanted to keep an eye on you and make sure you were okay.#"

Darcy narrowed her eyes. “#You were worried that I was unstable. That I would hurt someone?#”

“No," Natasha said, her tone firm. "#No one really understands what they did to you yet, Darcy. I was worried that you might not feel well, or you might develop adverse side effects, but we never thought you would hurt us.#”

Clint reached out to ruffle Darcy’s hair with a soft smile. #We didn’t get a full debrief from Bruce. Only what he shared with Coulson. It wasn't a lot.#

Darcy nodded her understanding. Bruce and SHIELD still had some trust issues, and she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t given a full recounting of her abilities after his own history. #Which was what?# Darcy asked. # What’s the official story?#

 #Increased cognitive capacity. Heightened senses. Ability to manipulate objects with your mind.# Natasha shrugged. #His language was pretty vague.#

Darcy nodded, since it wasn't too far off the mark. #Heightened senses may be an understatement. And I can manipulate more than just objects.#

Natasha’s expression was carefully neutral as she signed, #People?# 

Darcy tried not to shrink back from the looks on their faces and nodded. #I don’t know to what extent exactly. But yes.#

Natasha finally seemed to notice the way that Darcy was trying to shrink into the cabinets and softened, pulling her in for a hug. “I’m sorry. We’re just worried about you. Bruce and I...we did not respond well to the treatments that made us the way we are, and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“I didn’t respond well either at first,” Darcy murmured into her shoulder. “But we’re past that point now, I think. I hope.”

At that admission, Natasha tightened her grip slightly, just enough to bring the edges of her nails into contact with the sensitive back of Darcy’s neck, causing the younger girl to shudder in what was truly a monumentally embarrassing tell in front of two very observant spies.

 

Spies who were in a relationship with each other, and seemingly had been for a very long, undisclosed amount of time, making Darcy’s stupid crush (Crushes? Did that have to be pluralized? She should ask JARVIS. He would know. And he probably wouldn't tease her for asking.) really really inconvenient. Shit.

 

Darcy tried to cover her gaffe by coughing, pulling away from Natasha to hide her face behind her arm.

“#Phil is making scones,#” Darcy blurted out as soon as it seemed safe to stop fake coughing. “#I should probably shower before he shows up. I’ll see you guys later.#”

 

And then she fled into the relative privacy of her bathroom, very firmly concentrating on the sounds directly around her (rushing water, the susurrus of her pajamas sliding to floor, the sunction-y sound the shower door made when she pulled it open, the low-level buzz of electricity in the lights) and not on anything that may or may not be happening in her kitchen.

  


***

 

Natasha and Clint were gone when Darcy finally emerged, clean and bundled up in her softest and most threadbare sweater and a long jersey skirt (denim it seemed, was something she was going to have work her way back up to, because right now it felt like she was wrapped in sandpaper). Darcy was both relieved and disappointed. She tried not to examine that too closely.

 

Phil, however, was sitting at her kitchen table and neatly filling in reports. There was a plate of still-warm scones on the table and a large stack of paperwork that Darcy assumed was for her in front of the empty chair to his right. His black suit had a dark grey pinstripe and his seemingly solid blue tie was actually a tonal herringbone. Phil was a details man, she had known that since New Mexico, and she knew he took his suits seriously, but she had never noticed those little details before. It made her sad, to think that people missed the little things behind his Secret Agent Persona.

 

Darcy detoured into the kitchen first for coffee, touched that someone had brewed a fresh pot while she was in the shower (most likely Natasha, after Clint had finished the pot). She then flopped unceremoniously into the chair next to Phil, who had continued to write, and broke off a large chunk of scone to shovel into her mouth. She was starving, once again, and had come to the conclusion that she probably needed to have a chat with Steve about how to cope with a ramped up metabolism if she had any intentions of not being hungry all the time forever and ever.

 

Phil looked at her when she let out a loud moan upon realizing that somehow the magical scones actually tasted even _better_ with her new annoyingly picky tastebuds (unlike literally everything else she had shoved into her mouth since escaping).

“Good?”

“Awesome,” Darcy mumbled around another mouthful. “Thanks.”

He nodded and turned back to his reports. Darcy glanced at the ones in front of her and blinked slowly. “Phil?” He made a little grunt of acknowledgement. “Why are all of these reports written in code? What does any of this even _mean_?”

He looked up at her. “I’m not going to make you fill them out Darcy. Assets have orientations and manuals and handlers for a reason. We’ll debrief. Then I’ll finish the reports.”

Darcy nibbled on another piece of scone and examined him carefully. “Sorry that you have to do extra work because of me.”

Phil softened at that, and put his pen down. “I would be perfectly happy to fill out reports for the next seventy-two hours straight, if I had to. It will be infinitely more enjoyable than wrangling Tony Stark when his favorite lab assistant has been kidnapped. Don't even get me started on Delta. I got a memo from accounting about the number of arrows and spent rounds those two wasted on the range last week 'blowing off steam' while waiting on intel.”

Darcy snorted and took a sip of coffee. “I imagine that the past week has been trying for everyone.”

“How are you doing?” Phil asked. 

Darcy shrugged. “Adjusting.”

Phil nodded his understanding.

“How long did it take you?” Darcy asked quietly, her eyes down on the table. “To adjust.”

 

When Phil didn’t answer she finally looked up. His face was carefully blank, both hands still on the tabletop.

This was Agent Coulson, not Phil. It had been awhile since Darcy had needed to recognize the difference.

It didn't hurt, though. She understood.

 

“Adjust to what, Darcy?” Calm, even tone. But she could tell his adrenaline response had been triggered anyway.

“They gave you something alien. To bring you back after Loki, I’m guessing, since they never did explain that,” Darcy said. “And now your brain works differently. And your heart beats differently.” She tilted her head to one side, listening to it. “The rhythm isn’t quite right. But it’s steady and stable, so I know you’re okay.” Darcy looked directly at Phil then, wanting him to see her when she said, “Nothing will ever change the fact that I was happy to get you back, regardless of what they did to you to make it happen. And I would never tell anyone. But you're not _just_ you, anymore. And neither am I.”

The Agent Coulson mask slipped ever so slightly. “The only other person who knows is Nick.” He swallowed, and finally answered her question. “I’m still adjusting. But it got easier.”

“Do you ever hope that you’re the only one like you?” Darcy whispered.

Phil nodded but didn't say anything more.

“It’s not like it’s all bad,” Darcy said before she nibbled on another fragment of scone and gathered her thoughts. “It’s hard, knowing so much about people that they don’t necessarily want you to. But I’ve never felt so connected to the world before either.” Darcy bit her lip and tried not to cry at the overwhelming scale of the universe pressing around her. “Everything feels so much _more_ and I can’t--” she flailed her arms and dropped the piece of scone in her hand. “I feel like an open book. Like a raw nerve. And I’m always _hungry_ ,” she added with a hysteria-edged laugh.

“Well that’s an easy place to start,” Phil said, standing up and heading for her fridge. “You need to eat more protein.”

 

And so Darcy sat at her kitchen table and watched Phil (not Agent, just Phil) make her a cheese omelette, listening to his strange heartbeat and crying a little, although she wasn’t entirely sure what for anymore.

  
Phil, ever the soul of discretion, very politely pretended not to notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a photoset for this chapter is [here](https://pepperpottsblogs.tumblr.com/post/155859930095/i-will-be-a-gun-and-its-you-ill-come-for) on my tumblr!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the omelette had been thoroughly demolished and the breakfast dishes cleared away, Phil debriefed Darcy.
> 
> For the most part, he remained (seemingly) nonplussed by Darcy’s story. Until:
> 
> “And under what name did you obtain the train ticket?” Phil sat with his pen poised over his notes, clearly waiting to fill in a required blank in the official narrative that they had been slowly weaving.
> 
> “What.”
> 
> He looked up. “I need to know which ticket was yours so we can wipe it from Amtrak’s database.” Upon noticing her grimace he added, “Please don’t make me go look for it.”
> 
> He would find out one way or the other. Darcy sighed. “Francesca Barton.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeeey guys, long time no see. I am still embroiled in coursework and this semester starts on Tuesday, so don't get your hopes up for regular updates. But I miss you guys and this story! So here's a belated Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/New Year's present from me to you <3

After the omelette had been thoroughly demolished and the breakfast dishes cleared away, Phil debriefed Darcy.

For the most part, he remained (seemingly) nonplussed by Darcy’s story. Until:

“And under what name did you obtain the train ticket?” Phil sat with his pen poised over his notes, clearly waiting to fill in a required blank in the official narrative that they had been slowly weaving.

“What.”

He looked up. “I need to know which ticket was yours so we can wipe it from Amtrak’s database.” Upon noticing her grimace he added, “Please don’t make me go look for it.”

He would find out one way or the other. Darcy sighed. “Francesca Barton.”

Phil blinked at her and then carefully wrote in her response. “Not what I expected.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t really look like a Philippa Coulson,” Darcy snarked.

“Julia Coulson,” Phil murmured.

“What.”

“If you were going with middle names, mine is Julien. The feminized version of which would be Julia. Hence, Julia Coulson.”

Darcy shook her head slowly. “Nope. No, because  _ Agent _ is your first name. Agent Phil Coulson.”

Phil sighed. “You have been spending way too much time with Stark. Did you speak to anyone on the train?”

 

And so they continued.

  
  


***

  
  


“We need to get a handle on what it is exactly that you can do,” Phil told Darcy. “I think it would be best if we started out by having you do some excercises with a few members of the team--”

“Wanda,” Darcy blurted.

Phil did that thing where he stared at her without blinking for a moment, as though she would explain herself if he just sat still enough and waited. When she didn’t, he prompted, “That wasn’t who I was expecting.”

“Wanda and I have the most similar skill sets,” Darcy recited. “Putting the two of us together would help to determine how how those skill sets are different.”

Phil continued to stare at her. “And?”

“And  _ what _ ,” Darcy ground out. "Enlighten me."

“You think that she will be the least disturbed by evidence of what you are capable of,” Phil posited. “Or perhaps you think she is also best-suited to defend herself against whatever you can do.” When Darcy said nothing Phil nodded. “Very well. You may begin with Wanda. I will observe,  _ alone _ ,” he added quickly at the expression on her face. “No recording of any kind. Just think of it as a placement test.”

“That’s not as comforting as you think it is,” Darcy griped.

“Apologies,” Phil murmured, not looking sorry at all. “What say we meet in the team training gym in an hour?”

Darcy nodded, ignoring the pit in her stomach.

Phil stood and gathered his papers, waiting to deliver his parting shot until he was nearly at the door. “You can’t hide it from them forever, you know.”

“Sounds a lot like the pot calling the kettle black,” Darcy fired back. “And some of us don’t have the luxury of Nick Fury covering our ass.”

 

****

 

Phil explained to Wanda and Darcy that they wouldn’t be engaging in any mock combat but would be playing a simple game of one-upmanship.

Darcy smirked and silently asked JARVIS to play the chorus to “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” over the gym speakers. 

Wanda laughed, finally allowing herself to relax. “We’ll see about that, Darcy.”

Darcy bent her knees and fell into an exaggerated defensive position. “Are we gonna trash talk each other for a while first or are you here to show me what you can do?”

Phil sighed. “Behave. Both of you.”

Darcy and Wanda glanced at each other before turning to Phil with matching innocent expressions. “Yes, Dad.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “If you’re good, I’ll buy you ice cream later. Now if we could please get started?”   
  


For the most part, Darcy could hold her own against Wanda. They could both move objects with their minds, although Darcy did so without the tell-tale red mist that was Wanda’s signature. But any time Darcy had to work against Wanda, she lost. Darcy might be more subtle, but she was definitely weaker, which was actually strangely comforting.

 

Phil had stood off the side and observed in silence, jotting down notes occasionally. When Darcy and Wanda ran out of ideas, he nodded. “Thank you, Wanda. You’ve been a huge help.”

Wanda blushed at the sincerity in his voice and nodded. Darcy reached over to thread their fingers together and give her a smile. It had been nice, playing around in the gym with her, almost like little kids on a playground. 

“I just have a few more questions for Darcy,” Phil said quietly. “Why don’t you go on upstairs and she’ll be along soon?”

Wanda pursed her lips and glanced between the two quickly, as though weighing whether she was willing to leave Darcy alone. Darcy squeezed her hand once, softly, and smiled. “Go on ahead, Red. We’ll be fine.”

Darcy waited until the door clicked shut behind her before turning to Phil with a single raised brow. “So, what don’t you want Wanda to see?”

“Wanda is capable of manipulating people’s minds. Planting images. We need to know whether you can do anything similar.”

Darcy chewed on her lip for a moment as she considered Phil. “Is that really a good idea? Letting me just….poke around in your brain to see what I can accomplish?”

Phil shrugged. “I trust you to know your limits. And it...wouldn’t be the first time.”

Darcy swallowed down a sudden lump in her throat at the fleeting look in Phil’s eyes. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It means I can handle it and you don’t need to worry. I trust you, Darcy. Right now, I need you to trust me.”

Darcy stepped forward, nodding. “Okay, I can do that. But I’m not going to try to plant anything new in there. Just...see if I can access memories.” Phil nodded in encouragement and Darcy reached out to put a hand on each side of Phil’s head, her thumbs resting at his temples. “Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

Darcy exhaled slowly and  _ reached _ , looking for Phil’s memory in the same way she had looked for JARVIS the other day. 

And all of a sudden she was being  _ bombarded _ with images, flickering past rapidly: 

Clint with a broken cheekbone and a black eye; Natasha bleeding from a knife wound to the stomach; a tropical beach; Clint in a hospital bed, his skin grey and mottled everywhere in bruises; Natasha looking impossibly young and malnourished and hollow while Clint pointed an arrow at her--

Darcy yanked her hands away from Phil’s head, eyes shut tight, breathing heavily. “Are you insane? Don’t fucking  _ do _ that,” she spat, pressing her hands into her sides to keep from them from shaking.

“Do what?” Phil asked. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Darcy opened her eyes to glare at him. “Don’t think about all the things in your brain that you  _ don’t want me to see _ , you moron.”

“Damn,” Phil muttered. “Right, I should have known that would backfire.”

“Okay, think of something innocuous. Super tame. Hella boring.”

“Paperwork?” Phil asked with a wry smile.

“Something I haven’t seen you doing dozens of times before, thanks. Childhood memory? College graduation?”

Phil nodded and gestured for Darcy to come back to him. “Okay. Do it again.”

Darcy grumbled and moved closer. “Yeah, yeah, G-Man, don’t get too authoritarian on me here.” She gently settled her hands back in place and reached….

 

_ Phil had graduated outside on a grassy quad on a sunny and very hot day. His shoes were new and overly stiff so he had a blister on each heel, and the chair he was sitting in was unsteady, rocking back and forth as he listened to the speaker on the stage. The guy next to him was drinking vodka out of one of those tiny bottles you get on airplanes or out of hotel minibars. Someone tapped his shoulder from behind. Phil turned around. It was Fury--before the eye patch, somehow looking impossibly young and relaxed.  _

_ “Cheese, pass me that flask before I throw a fit. This guy has got to be the most uptight, boring motherfu--” _

_ “Language, Marcus,” Phil interjected in the same mild voice he always used. He pulled a flask out of his pocket and handed it over his shoulder.  _

  
  


Darcy pulled out, more slowly this time, her hands still in place on Phil’s head when she surfaced. 

Phil was waiting patiently and watching her face. “What’s the verdict?”

“I’m pretty sure I just hallucinated. Nick Fury was there, but he was...young,” Darcy said with a dramatic shudder. “He almost looked happy, which is obviously impossible. And he wasn’t wearing his eyepatch, in complete defiance of several natural laws. Plus you called him Marcus, so...hallucination. Definitely.”

Phil’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Well done.”

Darcy shrugged. “It’s nothing like Wanda. I can’t control what I see. I can’t put something in your head. I can’t even go looking for something specific.”

“Really?”

“Shockingly enough, Phil, your brain is not organized like your filing cabinet, with all your color-coded tabs and alphabetical-chronological system. I can’t go rifling through it. Whatever is at the forefront at that specific moment, I can see it, but that’s the limit.”

“You’re relieved,” he observed.

“The people I live with don’t exactly react well to the concept of mind control, Philip Julien Coulson,” she drawled as she sank down to sit on the padded floor. “And it’s probably bad enough that I can physically manipulate them into doing whatever I want, regardless of whether or not I ever would.”

Darcy stomach picked that moment to growl, loudly.

Phil sighed and held out a hand to pull her up from the floor. “Maybe you should have a chat with Steve about coping with your metabolism.”

  
“Okay but what if, instead of that, I just ate an  _ entire _ chocolate cake by myself,” Darcy suggested as she was corralled into the elevator. 


End file.
